13 March 2017 – Thankfully I wasn’t actually on duty today, because with daylight savings time Arizona is now on West-coast time, and planning started at 6:30am! In any case, the weekend plan was successful, and put us close to the third stop of the current campaign to study the Bagnold Dunes.

The Sol 1636 plan starts off with a ChemCam passive observation of Vera Rubin Ridge, with a supporting Mastcam mosaic. ChemCam will also analyze the bedrock targets “Buck Cove Mountain” and “Smyrna Mills”. After that, we will do a short “bump” to Stop 3 of the dune campaign, with post-drive imaging. In the afternoon after the drive, ChemCam will do an automated AEGIS observation (likely to hit sand) and Navcam has a few atmospheric observations. We will also unstow the arm to prepare for contact science activities tomorrow.

Ryan Anderson is a planetary scientist and developer at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center and a member of the ChemCam team on MSL.

Dates of planned rover activities described in these reports are subject to change due to a variety of factors related to the Martian environment, communication relays and rover status.